


the man in the mirror

by jasondont (minigami)



Series: ontography [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hellblazer, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Gen, M/M, no beta we die like etc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:19:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28553766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minigami/pseuds/jasondont
Summary: That a room is empty doesn't mean that no one is there.
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex & Anakin Skywalker, CT-7567 | Rex/Anakin Skywalker, Darth Maul/CT-7567 | Rex
Series: ontography [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2105274
Comments: 7
Kudos: 47





	the man in the mirror

**Author's Note:**

> this is literally the devil you know but with anakin and in a big old house

Anakin leaves him in the foyer and goes back to Kenobi's office, his long legs eating the stairs in seconds. Rex waits for a while, sweating under his coat and feeling uncomfortable. He can hear them bickering from where he is, their voices going up and down and up again, the rhythm from the fight half-familiar, and he scoffs; he thinks about taking off his coat, about going back to the kitchen or to the library. He feels out of place and awkward, like he has stepped into the house uninvited, and someone is about to come down from the stairs and kick him out.

Kenobi’s house feels like a museum.

Rex has been there more than once, but it still feels to him like the kind of place where it’s easy to get lost, with guards waiting around the corner and locked doors. It’s in the old part of town, one of the oldest houses in the street, but it’s not just that—the place is so full of history its weight makes it hard to breathe sometimes.

He knows it’s all in his head—Kenobi likes him as much as he usually likes anybody, or so Anakin has said more than once, his voice half-jealous, half-relieved, and nobody lives in the house except him. It’s big and empty and dusty; the man shares its cavernous rooms with memories and books and old chairs and stained mirrors and so many clocks sometimes Rex thinks he can hear them after he has left.

Anakin told him once, when they were still getting to know each other and he was still trying to find out what it would take to make Rex run away, that when he was younger he used to be terrified of the place. He never saw anything, but it felt like the kind of place ghosts belong to, and he spent years jumping at shadows.

There are no ghosts in the house, however—Kenobi is too good at his job, whatever his job really is. It’s just old and dirty and hollow, and Rex sometimes thinks it also acts as a mirror: you only see what you expect.

There are no ghosts in the house, that’s the thing.

And that’s why, when Rex hears something coming from one of the nearby rooms, he is not afraid. The rafters creak, and so do the floorboards; the window panes whine and the chimneys whistle: the house talks, and while Rex does not think he will ever learn its language, by now he knows the house well enough to know that it speaks.

The noise is like the tapping of long nails on an empty wine glass, it clinks and echoes and travels around. It doesn’t stop, and after a while Rex gets bored of waiting for Anakin and of waiting for it to stop on its own, and decides to go exploring.

Because that’s how it feels, walking around Kenobi’s big house—it feels like walking into a maze, into the kind of place you need a map, a lot of luck and a guide to navigate. Rex has neither, but that doesn’t stop him—he’s always been curious.

There is a long hallway to the left of the foyer. The house is bigger than it looks from the outside, and when Rex opens the door, the hallway stretches in front of him like a long ribbon of shadow and old wood. The wall to his left faces the street, and he knows there is a window there, covered by heavy and ragged velvet curtains, the colour so dark he can’t tell what it is. To the right he can see a long line of closed doors—there are only three, but the darkness and the architecture of the place make it seem as if the hallway was longer, as if the wall was populated by an infinite series of dark wooden closed doors.

The noise is coming from the last one. Rex stops right in front of it, his hand on the door handle, and he waits, looks to his back, to the empty foyer—he can still hear Anakin and Kenobi arguing, they have clearly forgotten about him, and as far as he knows Kenobi doesn’t actually give a shit about him poking around his house. With time, Rex has learned that the man sees people as either family or everyone else—Rex is Anakin’s, and that means that he belongs to the former group. He’s given him books and and stupid trinkets and an old coat, once; Rex still wears it, sometimes.

However, knowing that he is allowed to explore and acting on that impulse are very different things—and while Rex doesn’t think Kenobi would have anything dangerous in his house where everyone can find it… well.

Rex likes the man, but while he can’t say he actually knows him, something tells him that the things that he considers dangerous and the things that actually are don’t always overlap.

He brushes the door handle with his fingertips—it’s metal, bronce maybe, and it looks green and tainted in the golden, watery light that filters from the foyer. It’s cold, and when Rex twists it, he finds that the door isn’t locked.

Rex doesn’t know why, but he thought it would be.

The room on the other side is weirdly bare. Its emptiness makes it look bigger than it is; there is a window on the wall to his left that faces an empty alley, and an old wicker chair set right in the middle of the room.

The chair faces a mirror, a big, old-fashioned thing, the glass stained and blackened in places. Rex frowns, cocks his head. He crosses the threshold and closes the door behind him, and then puts his hands in the pockets of his jeans—the room is very cold, colder than the rest of the house. There is an old radiator under the only window, and Rex crosses the room and touches it with the tips of his fingers—it’s not even warm.

The room is dirty, dusty, even more than the rest of the house. The dust on the floor is more or less disturbed—someone does pop in the room now and then, he can see footprints—but everything else looks as if Kenobi has forgotten the room is even there.

Rex leans on the wall next to the window. The glass is cracked in one corner, and he picks at it with his nail. Maybe that was what he heard.

“Who are you?”

Rex jumps. When he turns to face the rest of the room, he finds it as empty as it was when he opened the door. He looks down, to the floor—no new footprints on the dust.

A flash of movement makes him look to the left and—

There is a man in the mirror.

Rex blinks. He grabs at the radiator instinctively, the cold and dirty iron reassuring in its normalcy. The man has a red and black face, and wild yellow eyes, and a head full of horns. He looks at Rex from the mirror, but—the room is empty.

Rex swallows, once, twice. His heart is beating so hard in his chest he feels dizzy, and he can’t breathe well—it’s like his lungs have stopped working as they should, and the sound of his shallow breaths is too loud in the room, it echoes.

The man in the mirror tilts his head at him. He is wearing black—black shirt, black slacks, black shoes. He holds his hands at his back, and his back is very straight. He feels both severe and not—he paces on the other side of the mirror, his steps short and clipped; it’s like watching a wild animal testing the boundaries of its cage.

The idea is—reassuring. Rex feels his heartbeat slow, and he approaches the mirror. He stops right behind the chair and grabs its back, feels the cold wood scratch his palms.

“Who are _you_?” he asks back.

The man in the mirror scoffs derisively. He doesn’t so much look as stare, and the weight of his attention is more than a little unnerving.

“Of course Kenobi would not have told you, or anyone, for that matter,” he says. His voice is velvet soft, but when he says Kenobi’s name it dips into something hoarse, unsettling—he hates the man. “Oh, if he could forget I am still here, the symbol of his greatest failure—”

Rex raises a brow, and leans on the chair.

“You are the one trapped there,” he replies, even if he does not know whether the man is really trapped. “Not him. That doesn’t look like failure.”

The man in the mirror growls. Rex feels his hands clench on the chair, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t look away.

“I won’t be trapped for long,” the man says. He stops pacing, stands in front of the mirror, and stares at Rex.

There is a chair on his side as well—it looks like the one Rex is holding. The man looks at it, looks at him, and then tilts his head, smiles.

He rests his hands on the back, exactly on the same place where Rex has his and—he feels something. A warm, dry palm.

He lets go of the chair and takes a step back, and the man in the mirror laughs, his laughter soft and low.

The door opens, and Rex jumps, turns to look over his shoulder.

Anakin’s there. He is scowling, and he carries Rex’s bag on his right hand. His knuckles are white.

“Maul,” he snarls.

The man in the mirror stops smiling. He takes a step back, and then another, his hands raised. His palms are black, like ink or tar or coal—they look burned, charred.

“Ah, yes. Skywalker,” the man says. He sounds perfectly respectful, but there is something underneath his even tone—he is scared of him, of Anakin. “Apologies. I did not know he was yours.”

Rex scowls.

He is no one’s.

The man takes one look at his face and laughs and laughs and laughs.


End file.
